TLA Anno 4
FB: While the Sky Elves might be willing to bend, Frigg and Best plan a bender, and Penk channels Bender.
It’s impressive that Penk can admit “a handful of sky elves can be as strong as a platoon of trolls,” though that might be oversimplifying it. The real assets sky elves bring to the table are the things they can do that no other combatants can do, no matter how numerous they are. Ten thousand goblins working in tandem still aren’t gonna engineer you one portal.
On the other hand, Penk’s last comment seems to be…well…trolling? Like, I can’t believe he seriously thinks Syr’Nj has been saying “Kill all humans,” when just last night she was talking “Peace between humans and elves.” Like, Penk, you were there. You replied to her. If she gets a few minutes to really think about this, she’s gonna realize you’re being willfully inconsistent.
Then again, Penk has some reasons he can’t leap too quickly to peace with humanity, some of which he’ll articulate on page 6, and some of which I’ll articulate for him.
It’s interesting how thoroughly Syr’Nj misunderstands Caneghem. Even if he did so earlier, at this point he definitely doesn’t intend to stick with Gastonia, nor is he interested in dealing with the other side of the conflict. While it’s true that the archmage isn’t the easiest person to read, he’s not so completely inscrutable that Syr couldn’t have gotten to know him a little bit better than that.
Well, Caneghem is definitely of the mind that it is more beneficial to stick with Gastonia *at least for now*, otherwise he wouldn’t be sticking with Gastonia. That much is provably true.
concerning “for the future” … Syr’Nj doesn’t say how far into the future she means that, but the way I read her here is that she things he’s unlikely to be persuaded to switch sides before the final battle, and that, too, sounds reasonable, if you ask me. Caneghem wants to keep sky elves in their comfortable position where they don’t need to deal with stuff, and so he won’t be in favour of a revolution of any kind. He’d like to keep the distribution of power between the peoples about the same as it is because that implies that sky elves can keep doing what they do.
No, what is provably true is that Caneghem has already spent weeks casting the spells that will soon allow him to teleport the sky elf cities far away from the humans and other races. Just because he hasn’t yet announced his plan to relocate his people doesn’t mean he’s sticking with Gastonia.
This is true, but Caneghem’s kept his separatist plan a secret even from some of his own people. Hollister and Clair will be slackjawed when he discloses it. Reynolds, the closest thing he had to a friend that we saw, didn’t know anything about it either. On the other hand, Caneghem stood with the Altruists when they gave Syr’Nj their “join or die” pitch. So, yeah, she didn’t read Caneghem right, but it could be argued he never gave her a chance to do so.
Second balloon should read: “…it’s OF greater benefit FOR him to stick with…”
I actually read the balloon that way until you pointed it out.
Comic reading is weird…
Do Winter Elves even have taverns? It seems like getting drunk while being able to see the future might be super unpleasant. Either that or it dulls the vizions; but if that worked, I would expect to see them all have severe drinking problems.
“Considering their notoriously thriftless lifestyles, the archmage might see a positive value change there.”
What is the meaning of this sentence? Whose lifestyles are thriftless? It can only refer to the Sky Elves, unless either Don Gobligno or Archmage Caneghem identify as non-binary. Why would the archmage be interested in a positive value change? I mean, the Sky Elves just stea… cough! I mean conjure anything they might need, right?
While I’m not certain of the exact meaning of the sentence, I would like to point out that they can be used in a singular form without the target being nonbinary. That being said some trans people apperantly aren’t fond of the use of singular they for them because it is often used to bypass their gender so mileage may vary.
However, in this case ‘their’ agrees with ‘lifestyles’. If it were one ‘they’-pronouned person, I would say “their thriftless lifestyle”.
As for the meaning of the sentence, I too was going to ask.
“Positive value change” refers back to “greater benefit” in the first panel. Trade with the Goblins would improve the Sky Elf resources, so it could be of greater benefit to them than alliance with Gastonia. That is, if Sky Elves actually need money, which I doubt.
“Thriftless lifestyles” means the Sky Elves spend a lot of cash. Their lavish clothes suggest this to Goblaurence, but he may be mistaken. (Because conjuring.)
I reckon he’s saying that sky elves are used to high standards of living. Therefore, being paid large amounts of money by Don Gobligno would be a “positive value change” because it would better enable them to maintain the lifestyles that they’re accustomed to.
And Thomas beat me to the punch. Should’ve refreshed the page before replying…
There’s a difference between magically conjuring only things that already exist (while knowing that it’s stealing from someone else) and having actual trade going on. Two obvious benefits are being able to buy in greater bulk than they can steal (without being discovered) and being able to pay for custom work.
The High Elves might theoretically appreciate proper plumbing rather than having to magically clean chamberpots, for example. Even if the chamberpots end up cleaner as a result, toilets would still be of great use to a drunken, sleepy, or simply very young High Elf. They’d also drastically reduce the amount of magic needed to be spent on cleaning, and the number of times one needed to clean up after themselves. Their city’s magic stores could then be better spent on such things as tighter defenses, if they were needed.